Prostate stuff

[Bill in Oregon]

I've been dealing with BPH for at least a decade now. Medication has helped keep it in check, but at some point it won't be enough. The gold standard used the be the transurethral resection procedure, or TURP. But I happened to see an ad last night for IR treatment -- or interventional radiology. Had not heard of it before. They use a process called Prostate Artery Embolization in which tiny microspheres are injected into the arteries nourishing the prostate, causing the blood supply to be reduced and shrinking the gland.
Side effects are few and recovery time great superior to the TURP.
Has anyone here had this procedure? Sounds like the nuts to me -- sorry!

https://advantage-ir.com/cnd-prostat...-embolization?

[Tycer]

Please tell me you have been having your vitamin d levels checked quarterly and are keeping your d serum levels above 50. If your urologist hasn’t had you do this you might want to think about changing urologists. It’s about the lowest of the low hanging fruit.

[Sixgun]

Two buddies of mine have had to deal with it.....one got the radiation beads and the other got the "gold standard"....the guy with the beads is doing well after about 8 years and the one with the "gold standard" is also doing well but with lots of issues.......for one he wears diapers a year later and his other issue is his pecker ain't nothing but a nub.....---6

[AJMD429]

Of course the first treatment most docs use is Flomax, Which works quickly and pretty well, although it wears off after a few months for many guys. Then most of them transition to drugs like Proscar that block testosterone’s effect on the prostate. Those work a little better long-term. I’ve actually not had any patients do the embolization yet.

The other thing in addition to the vitamin D mentioned above, as it is vital for men to have their estrogen levels checked. There are far too many guys with elevated estrogen levels, which caused the same symptoms as low testosterone levels, including fatigue, weight gain, moodiness, and sexual dysfunction. Elevated estrogen also predisposes them to diabetes and appears to be a big factor in triggering prostate enlargement. Some people think maybe it also is going to be found to be a risk factor for prostate cancer as well as enlargement to have a high estrogen level. Sometimes you need to measure the free, or unbound, estrogen, and not just the total, but most of the time we are also measuring the free testosterone level and total testosterone level, and since the same binding proteins bind both then you can get by with just a total estrogen level and make the appropriate inferences.

We’re not sure why so many men develop elevated estrogen levels, but one factor might be exposure to glyphosate the herbicide; The biochemists reporting that seem to feel like even a one time exposure might trigger a lifetime of enzyme derangement leading to that elevation.

Hopefully it doesn’t get missed too much now, but guys who have low testosterone levels and are getting that treated definitely need to have the estrogen monitored because both sexes turn testosterone into estrogen; Women turn about 90% of their testosterone to estrogen so become estrogen dominant, whereas men only turn about 10% into estrogen normally. However if you have a guy with low testosterone he may actually convert a much higher percentage into estrogen and it flies under the radar. However once you double or triple his testosterone level by making it normal the estrogen level will likewise double or triple, and may therefore be too high and need treatment. It is not a reason to discontinue testosterone treatment, But we give a once or twice a week pill that slows down the conversion and reduces the estrogen level to normal. I would think most primary care doctors are well-versed in all of this, but my cynicism about healthcare providers grows daily, and I’m beginning to think most of them are more interested in their stock portfolio and vacation schedule than actually keeping current with clinical patient care; The latter doesn’t seem to matter when you are an employee of a hospital network, because your only job there is a primary care physician is to “feed the system”.

[Bill in Oregon]

Not having Vitamin D levels checked. There is so much sunshine and natural Vitamin D here that most of my psoriasis just went away.
Doc, thanks for your thoughts on checking T and E levels. My internist is "independent" as far as I know.

[1894c]

Two buddies of mine have had to deal with it.....one got the radiation beads and the other got the "gold standard"....the guy with the beads is doing well after about 8 years and the one with the "gold standard" is also doing well but with lots of issues.......for one he wears diapers a year later and his other issue is his pecker ain't nothing but a nub.....---6

YIKES! ... :(

[Sixgun]

Two buddies of mine have had to deal with it.....one got the radiation beads and the other got the "gold standard"....the guy with the beads is doing well after about 8 years and the one with the "gold standard" is also doing well but with lots of issues.......for one he wears diapers a year later and his other issue is his pecker ain't nothing but a nub.....---6

YIKES! ...

Yep.......he told me his wife laughs at him.......calls him "peanut D". They actually cut yo pecker inside and pull the outside part inside. I hope that don't happen to me because if it does I'll only have a 16" hanging out.-----Long Dong 6

[AJMD429]

Not having Vitamin D levels checked. There is so much sunshine and natural Vitamin D here that most of my psoriasis just went away.

Two studies of interest though...

One was a team of PhD students in California who decided "...let's go to the beach, and study WOMEN... ......, er, I mean, 'Vitamin D levels in Women' ...."

They found 2/3 of the women enjoying the beach in California had LOW vitamin D levels. They were evidently too distracted by the bikinis to note how many of the women were just visiting, or used sun-screen, and other things that would have been of interest, but 2/3 were below a level of 40.

The other was just an internal medicine doc in Florida who accepted a challenge to test his patients, when he had commented at a conference in Indiana that his patients would be unlikely to have low vitamin D. He later contacted the speaker and said that of the first twenty patients he tested, ALL BUT TWO had low vitamin D levels.

In my Indiana experience, even landscapers and surveyors tested in August seldom have vitamin D levels over 40, and many docs think that 60-80 is ideal. (There is 'controversy' about that though, and some docs think a level of 31 is perfectly ok... )

[mark]

I bad a cancerous prostate removed, 6-3-2019.

I am 71 years of age.

Put your "love life" on the after burner.

Mark